Ares

ARES. - "Αρς, Greek god of war. For some the name would mean "the destroyer," but the etymology is disputed. For the ancients he was Thracian and therefore foreign; for some of the moderns he is a Greek god, for others he originated in Thrace or Caria. In the Iliad he is the son of Zeus and Dione; he represents wild and unreasoning warlike fury, the frenzy for destruction, blood and slaughter; he is disliked by the gods, despised and hated; the Arcadians shut him up in a bronze barrel so that he would not devastate Thessaly. The Homeric portrait also had an influence in later ages. Only the late Homeric hymn, identifying A. with the planet Mars, makes him a benevolent god, defender of justice. The primitive nature of A. has remained obscured by the warrior god: some have made him a primitive god of vegetation, others of the storm, or a pre-Hellenic chthonic (subterranean) god to whom the Erinyes would correspond; in fact, according to a Theban saga, A. would have had as his wife Tilphossa, one of the Erinyes, and their son would have been the serpent killed by Cadmus. The Arcadian cult of Tegea, where only women sacrificed to him, has been considered ancient. The most common epithet of A. is Enyalios, who perhaps originally was an independent god and was later absorbed by A.

A. is associated with female divinities of whom he was considered the spouse: Enyo in Thessaly (for some instead she was the mother), Aglauros in Athens, Tilphossa or Aphrodite in Thebes, etc. Perhaps from the Theban tradition arose the legend of the loves of A. with Aphrodite, already recalled by the Odyssey. A. has no votive inscriptions and only exceptionally gifts, no city considered him its protector, few offered him a cult, still rarer were those in which he had a temple (Athens, Geronthrai) where women could not enter the temple, Dreros, Troezen). As Enyalios he was worshiped especially at Sparta. At Rome he was identified with Mars, while in Enyalios Quirinus was recognized. For the ancients A. was an adult man, bearded, covered in heavy armor with helmet, sword and spear; from the 5th century B.C. onward they represented him as young and naked.

Luisa Banti